Approaches to testing can be extremely varied and often appear to lose sight of its purpose. The motivation must be to ensure that the outcomes and products of the initiative will meet the promised business objectives.
Throughout the initiative, many varying types of testing may have been mentioned; unit, functional, system, stress, volume, integration, regression, etc., however the ultimate test of whether the business objectives can be met will be User Acceptance testing (UAT). To ensure that UAT will thoroughly test the COTS solution, it must meet the following criteria:
- Be performed by the people who will be using the system
- Cover all user processes and not just those performed on the system
- Be repeatable, script-based and possibly automated
- Cover all possible inputs and not just those leading to desired outcomes